could you please tell me if 2.6.20-rc2 or newer kernel works on amd64 in conjunction with Intel ICH / JMicron controller ??

I've been running gentoo-source 2.6.19 without any problems. Of course, I couldn't get ICH Pata to work, so I moved that drive to another computer. Things have been going so well that I actually managed to get that other comp setup as a file server.

In other words I'm getting bored with the stability, so decided to hook up a drive and see what happened.

2.6.20 rc2 git sources
Test with Pata drive on ICH. DVD on Jmicron.

DVD is present but can't comment on performance yet (dvd player isn't setup properly yet). I don't anticipate any problems.

ICH Pata ....

Notes in menuconfig indicate the "Intel PIIX/ICH SATA support" supplies SATA and PATA support.
So I left everything roughly equivalent to what I was using with gentoo-source.

The key problems being "PIO4" on a drive capable of UDMA6, and "unknown partition table".
/dev listed only "sda" with no partitions.
cfdisk showed the proper partition table.
Ran partprobe and udevstart and the partitions showed up in /dev.

I was going to run dbench or bonnie++ on the drive to try and test for system stability with this setup.
Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to use either program. A rather severe headache is preventing me from continuing for now.

I'll leave things setup as-is for now. If I run into any problems or figure out any fixes, I'll report back. But I likely won't be able to do much more till tomorrow or this weekend.

Andrew Morton just released 2.6.20-rc2-mm1, so you could give that "unstable" kernel a try

Switched to that one. Same issues. Drive will downgrade to PIO during boot, no partitions recognized until partprobe is used.
hdparm shows the drive at "udma0", but the kernel messages show PIO4.

Was using bios option for "enhanced ide".
Tried setting bios to "compatibility mode", and that will not allow SATA and PATA on the same controller. BIOS will only detect one of them.
Tried "AHCI", which introduces a different set of hangups during boot, but doesn't stop the original problem.

Also tried setting UDMA5 for the drive in BIOS. No go.

I think there are still kinks in the driver. But there is definitely progress being made.
I'll try a few more tests later.

I'm soon to be the owner of a new computer with pretty much the same set up as you (well use to have before your new SATA HDDs). Basically I'll have the P5W DH Deluxe/WIFI-AP with two IDE HDDs and IDE DVD-RW. Would you recommend just making the DVD-RW a SATA one (I haven't bought the burner yet). Then I could just forget about the JMicron and use the ICH7R only to get my system up and running. Then just wait for everything to be properly supported.

By the way what kernels, kernel options, grub options and patches combination works for your Marvell 88E8053 ethernet controller?

Thanks alot for the help. It seems like your the only person who know how to get the P5W DH to work with Linux on the net._________________"Linux is only free if your time is worthless."

But what kernel(s) work best. I've seen you list quite a few and it was dated as far back as June so I was hoping things have changed.

Thanks

now that's a really good question

I guess one of the best working should be those of the 2.6.20-rc* branch,

since I had some trouble with the 2.6.17, 2.6.18 (jmicron-related), 2.6.19 (ide timeout, gone to lunch, the IDE led was burning continuously so I couldn't burn; resets), this was solved with 2.6.19-git7/9;
there were also problems accessing the DVD-burner via k3b / the burner interface, which was fixed with 2.6.19-git17/19(?)

the reiser4 support left me with 2.6.19-git9 (kmem not working / incompatible change)
so that one was the last "good one" for me (no proper burner support though )

you could try out 2.6.20-rc1 (don't know if it works with JMicron though, because I made the switch to the Intel ICH7R / S-ATA drives at that point) & but it should work fine as it did with 2.6.19-git9

One last question. So on the 2.6.20-rc* branch, does the Mavelll 88E8053 PCI-e ethnet controllers work for you? Like you, I'll probably just work around the JMicron controller till it gets fixed down the road. But I got to have my internet up and working.

Thanks for all the help _________________"Linux is only free if your time is worthless."

on amd64 / x86_64 / 64bit it seems to run flawlessly more than 8-14 hours even after some heavy upload & some normal download => works

under x86 it seems to hickup, I can't upload a big file (>=130 MB) & download big files at the same time, but the strange thing is, that I have to restart my router to "fix" it, so it doesn't seem to be caused by sky2 fault => status: n.a.

I can't seem to get this to work.
I've got a p5b board, with the evil jmicron controller. I have only one ide (pata) harddrive connected (no dvd/cdrom).
I've tried loads of different kernel configurations now, http://pastebin.ca/257645 (posted by someone in this thread, don't remember who, sorry ;) ) for instance.

Lucky for me, I seemed to have no problem with the JMicron SATA drive -- it works on my PC with a stock gentoo 2.6.19 kernel.

What I would like to get working, tho, is the ability to remap memory so that I can see all four gigs of my memory. With my current kernel and remapping turned off in the bios, my machine is running great, but I can only see 3 gigs of RAM. If I turn on the remapping in the bios, I can't boot.

It's definitely doable, because the Small Gentoo disk works out of the box, and Ubuntu's install disk works, too. Both allow me to turn on remapping and see all 4 gigs RAM.

I've tried patching the kernel and using the config as on these web pages, but I guess I'm not smart enough to make it work.

Has anyone encountered this, and is there a simple solution that I am missing?

JMicron PATA is broken AGAIN for me, I can't believe this. I already had it working up to 2.6.20-git5. Because of sky2 problems I tried 2.6.20-git15 where booting would take minutes, throwing this crap on the screen. After it has booted, the drives connected to JMicron aren't available. I just tried 2.6.21-rc2 and it's still not working. This is what I get. I don't know if the ACPI errors are related, I don't get them with older kernels either.

I can't seem to get this to work.
I've got a p5b board, with the evil jmicron controller. I have only one ide (pata) harddrive connected (no dvd/cdrom).
I've tried loads of different kernel configurations now, http://pastebin.ca/257645 (posted by someone in this thread, don't remember who, sorry ) for instance.

Hi, I'm planning to get the MSI G965M which has a Jmicron JM20335 chip, not the JMB36x types. Anyone knows if this chip is supported? Googling for "linux jm20335" gives no useful result. Thanks.

it's simply too new, if you know someone who has that board I would testdrive the computer with one of the newest livecds available and see if it's recognized & usable, otherwise I would consider it as: "broken", meaning, this will take some time to function under linux ...